Apple Inc.

Agilent Technologies, Inc.

Martin Lindberg

Anders M Holtsberg

Jianping Zhou

Rudolph Van Der Merwe

Jason Klivington

Sebastien X Beysserie

George E Williams

Damien J Thivent

Xiaoxing Li

Brandon J Corey

Michal Johannsen

Steen Hauge Matthiesen

Peter VALBJØRN

Techniques to permit a digital image capture device to stabilize a video stream in real-time (during video capture operations) are presented. In general, techniques are disclosed for stabilizing video images using an overscan region and a look-ahead technique enabled by buffering a number of video input frames before generating a first stabilized video output frame. (Capturing a larger image than is displayed creates a buffer of pixels around the edge of an image; overscan is the term given to this buffer of pixels.) More particularly, techniques are disclosed for buffering an initial number of input frames so that a 'current' frame can use motion data from both 'past' and &#x201c;future&#x201d; frames to adjust the strength of a stabilization metric value so as to keep the current frame within its overscan. This look-ahead and look-behind capability permits a smoother stabilizing regime with fewer abrupt adjustments.

Video image stabilization

An image is compressed according to a compression ratio selected based on a compression metric. In one embodiment, the compression metric is based on image characteristics indicative of the amount of image noise in an image, such as gain and lux. Greater compression ratios are used for image having compression metrics indicating a higher degree of noise. Because an image with higher image noise levels already has a reduced visual quality, the impact of higher compression is less significant as compared to the impact of compression on images having low image noise. In an embodiment, an image is divided into a number of regions, for each of which a compression metric and corresponding compression ratio is determined, so that regions of the image having high image noise may be compressed more than regions having low image noise.

Dynamic compression ratio selection

Growing community of inventors

Los Altos, CA, United States of America

Martin Lindberg